A unique MRI scan on a 2,500 year old mummified Siberian ‘princess’ has revealed she died after suffering from acute breast cancer.

Preserved in ice in an elaborate grave in the Altai Mountains, the ancient woman – famous for her remarkable tattoos – took cannabis to dull the ravages of her illnesses, experts have also discovered.

‘Her use of drugs to cope with her illness may have given her “an altered state of mind”, leading her Pazyryk culture kinsmen to the belief that she could communicate with the spirits,’ said The Siberian Times.

Dug from her permafrost burial chamber on the high Ukok Plateau in 1993, analysis of her remains earlier highlighted sophisticated tattoos of ‘great artistry’ of fantastical creatures, while in her tomb was also found clothing and headdresses, a make-up bag, and a stash of cannabis, enabling experts to build a detailed picture of her life and looks.

Separately from the MRI, academics also conclude she was a virgin who lived a deliberately ‘celibate’ life.

The hi-tech scan was conducted in Novosibirsk by Russian scientists Andrey Letyagin and Andrey Savelov showed the ‘princess’ had suffered as a child or adolescent from osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone or bone marrow, and later from injuries consistent with falling from a horse.

‘When she was a little over 20 years old, she became ill with another serious disease – breast cancer. It painfully destroyed her’ over perhaps five years, said a summary of the groundbreaking medical findings by archeologist Professor Natalia Polosmak, who first found these remarkable human remains.

‘During the imaging of mammary glands, we paid attention to their asymmetric structure and the varying asymmetry of the MR signal,’ stated Dr Letyagin.

‘We are dealing with a primary tumour in the right breast and right axial lymph nodes with metastases.

‘The three first thoracic vertebrae showed a statistically significant decrease in MR signal and distortion of the contours, which may indicate the metastatic cancer process.’

He concluded: ‘I am quite sure in the diagnosis – she had cancer. She was extremely emaciated. Given her rather high rank in society and the information scientists obtained studying mummies of elite Pazyryks, I do not have any other explanation of her state. Only cancer could have such impact.’

Her actual cause of death may have been from a secondary factor – possibly an injury from her fall from which she initially survived, but was probably bedridden.

‘We see the traces of traumas she got not so long before her death, serious traumas – dislocations of joints, fractures of the skull. These injuries look like she got them falling from a height,’ he said.

‘Only cancer could have such an impact. It is clearly seen in the tumour in her right breast, visible is the metastatic lesion of the lymph node and spine….She had cancer and it was killing her.’

He stated: ‘During the imaging of mammary glands, we paid attention to their asymmetric structure and the varying asymmetry of the MR signal,’ stated Dr Letyagin in his analysis.

‘We are dealing with a primary tumour in the right breast and right axial lymph nodes with metastases.’

‘The three first thoracic vertebrae showed a statistically significant decrease in MR signal and distortion of the contours, which may indicate the metastatic cancer process.’

Breast cancer has been known to mankind since the times of the Ancient Egyptians yet this is believed to be the first time such a diagnosis has been made on a mummified ancient woman whose remains were preserve in permafrost, frozen for more than two millennia.

‘I am quite sure of the diagnosis – she had cancer. She was extremely emaciated. Given her rather high rank in society and the information scientists obtained studying mummies of elite Pazyryks, I do not have any other explanation of her state. Only cancer could have such impact,’ he said.

Dr Letyagin is from the Insтιтute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine, and Dr Savelov, an ᴀssociate in the laboratory of magnetic resonance tomography at the International Tomography Centre, both of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Medical Science, both in Novosibirsk. Their results were initially reported in Siberian academic journal ‘Science First Hand’ journal

Other analysis – including examination of the last food found in the stomachs of three horses buried in her tomb – allowed Dr Polesmak to formulate an intriguing account – like a trip back to ancient times – of this woman’s final months alive.

‘When she arrived in winter camp on Ukok in October, she had the fourth stage of breast cancer,’ she wrote.

‘She had severe pain and the strongest intoxication, which caused the loss of physical strength.

‘In such a condition, she could fall from her horse and suffer serious injuries.

‘She obviously fell on her right side, hit the right temple, right shoulder and right hip.

‘Her right hand was not hurt, because it was pressed to the body, probably by this time the hand was already inactive. Though she was alive after her fall, because edemas are seen, which developed due to injuries.

‘Anthropologists believe that only her migration to the winter camp could make this seriously sick and feeble woman mount a horse. More interesting is that her kinsmen did not leave her to die, nor kill her, but took her to the winter camp.’

‘In other words, this confirmed her importance, yet though she is often called a ‘princess’, the truth maybe she was was – in fact – a female shaman,’ reported The Siberian Times.

‘It looks like that after arriving to the Ukok Plataue she never left her bed,’ said Dr Polosmak.

‘The pathologist believes that her body was stored before the funerals for not more than six months, more likely it was two-to-three months.

‘She was buried in the middle of June – according the last feed that was found in the stomachs of horses buried alongside her.

‘The scientists think that she died in January or even March, so she was alive after her fell for about three to five months, and all this time she lay in bed.’

The academic said ‘special attention’ should be paid to ‘the fact that likely she used some analgesics, with all the ensuing consequences.

‘In ancient cultures, from which there is a written testimony, such analgesics were used wine, hashish, opium, henbane, an extract of mandrake, aconite and Indian hemp. The Pazyryks knew hemp and its features.’

Earlier evidence found a container of cannabis in her burial chamber, as if she might require it in the afterlife.

‘Probably for this sick woman, sniffing cannabis was a forced necessity,’ she said.

‘And she was often in altered state of mind. We can suggest that through her could speak the ancestral spirits and gods.

‘Her ecstatic visions in all likelihood allowed her to be considered as some chosen being, necessary and crucial for the benefit of society.

‘She can be seen as the darling of spirits and cherished until her last breath.’

‘Evidently, shamans could often ᴀssume their powers after a significant illness: a woman might be physically weakened but able to develop her powers of concentration and meditation,’ explained the website.

‘This would explain the care her people took to care for her and not leave her to die, or hasten death. It also helps to understand the way her burial was conducted in a style similar – but different – to royalty.

‘She was buried not in a line of family tombs but in a separate lonely mound, located in a visible open place.

‘This may show that the Ukok woman did not belonged to an exact kin or family, but was related to all Pazyryks, who lived on this lofty outpost, some 2,500 metres above sea level.

‘This is an indication of her celibacy and special status. Besides, three horses were buried with her. In a common burial, one would be sufficient.’

In her vault was a ‘unique mirror of Chinese origin in a wooden frame’.

There were also coriander seeds, previously found only in so-called ‘royal mounds’.

Her mummification was carried out with enormous care in a comparable manner to royals.

Significantly, in the Altai Mountains, her supernatural powers are seen as continuing to this day.

‘Elders here voted in August to reinter the mummy of the ice maiden ‘to stop her anger which causes floods and earthquakes’,’ said The Siberian Times.

‘Known to locals as Oochy-Bala, the claim that her presence in the burial chamber was ‘to bar the entrance to the kingdom of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ’.

By removing this mummy, the elders contend that ‘the entrance remains open’.’

They demand she is removed from a specially-built museum in the city of Gorno-Altaisk, capital of the Altai Republic, and instead reburied high on the Ukok plateau.

‘Today, we honour the sacred beliefs of our ancestors like three millennia ago,’ said one elder. ‘We have been burying people according to Scythian traditions. We want respect for our traditions.’